Piers Blombery: Well done to Martin Vu for publishing this important health economic analysis on the cost-effectiveness of TP53/IGHV molecular testing in chronic lymphocytic leukemia in Australia.

Piers Blombery, a hematologist at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, recently shared on LinkedIn:

“Well done to Martin Vu for publishing this important health economic analysis on the cost-effectiveness of TP53/IGHV molecular testing in chronic lymphocytic leukemia in Australia (CLL).

Patients with CLL that have a high-risk molecular profile (TP53 mutated/IGHV unmutated) have highly inferior outcomes when treated with conventional chemotherapy. Despite this, there was no routine availability of this important molecular testing for patients in Australia. In order to remedy this, we started offering fully subsidized TP53/IGHV molecular testing through the Wilson Centre for Blood Cancer Genomics at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre back in 2018. Over the past half-decade (!) we have provided free testing for over 1500 patients with CLL from all around Australia and hopefully diverted many patients away from ineffective/toxic conventional chemotherapy and toward targeted therapies (which we know are much more effective in this high-risk subgroup).

When we started the testing program in 2018, chemotherapy was still very much part of the treatment landscape in Australia with no PBS subsidised access to targeted therapies upfront.. that has now thankfully completely changed and we are now about to have access to both #Venetoclax and #BTK inhibitors upfront… chemotherapy for first-line treatment of CLL is now largely in the rear-view mirror!

Now one of the emerging roles of TP53/IGHV molecular testing in CLL is to refine the choice of upfront targeted therapy (??continuous BTKi over time-limited Ven for TP53mut/IGHVunmut??) – so the calculus for this testing has moved from predominantly harm-minimisation to one of further optimising improved outcomes!”

For the article click here.
Source: Piers Blombery/LinkedIn